Lisha Arino | MLive.com"Unsolved Mysteries" which is currently on display at the USS Silversides Submarine Museum takes a look at the circumstances surrounding the sinking of the "Thomas Hume," a schooner named after one of Muskegon's famous lumber barons.

The two traveling exhibits, "Unsolved Mysteries of the
schooner Thomas Hume" and "Shipwrecks: A Deep Look" explore ships that ended up
at the bottom of Lake Michigan. The exhibits opened earlier this week

"Unsolved Mysteries," which debuted last summer at
the Lakeshore Museum Center, takes a look at the circumstances surrounding the
sinking of the "Thomas Hume," a schooner named after one of Muskegon's famous
lumber barons.

According to Valerie van Heest, the shipwreck explorer and
author who put the exhibit together, the ship used to transport lumber from
Muskegon to Chicago about two or three times a week in the 1800s. But in 1891,
the ship mysteriously disappeared.

No one knew what had happened to the ship until it was explored
in 2007, 12 years after it was discovered van Heest said. She said she was
compelled to share the shipwreck's story when she heard about its discovery.

"I just knew that the story had to be told and that the best
place to tell it was in Muskegon," she said.

To explain what happened to the ship and its importance to
the area, van Heest said she used videos, photography and drawings.

And because she couldn't use artifacts from the shipwreck –
by law, divers are not allowed remove anything from sunken ships – she had replicas
made and used antiques to show some of the everyday items the crew would have
had on board.

"Shipwrecks: A Deep Look," takes a closer look at three
other ships that sunk in the Big Lake, the "Rockaway," the "H.C. Akeley" and
the "Hennepin," and uses them to show the evolution of cargo loading on ships.

Van Heest, who also organized the exhibit, said it was
about "how technology changed our lives." The ships all loaded cargo
differently, she said, from the use of sheer manpower on the "Rockaway" to the
automation of the "Hennepin," which was the first ship ever built to
self-unload.

She used shipwrecks to convey the progression from
manual to automated loading, because those are the only ships of their kind that
still exist. She said that most other, similar ships either decayed or were
sold and sent to scrap yards.

"But the ones that exist, they're down there," she said. "It's
an underwater museum."

The exhibits are currently on display at the USS Silversides Submarine Museum, located at 1346 Bluff St., and will continue into the summer, according
to the museum's curator, Paul Garzelloni.

Both exhibits were brought to the
museum by the Michigan Shipwreck Research Association with grants from the Michigan Humanities Council.

The USS Silversides Submarine Museum is open seven days a
week, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. this month. Admission to the museum and the
submarine is $15 for adults, $12.50 for seniors and $10.50 for students between
5 and 18 years old. Admission to just the museum is $6 for all visitors.